Game Seeker

While Konami's PES team may not have addressed the animation adequately this year, one area that has clearly been focussed on is graphics. Without a doubt, the biggest improvement in PES 2010 comes in the form of its character models, which even better FIFA 10's on some occasions (Messi and Torres are certainly looking good) even though you'll still get the occasional 'Who the hell is he supposed to be!' player. It's an area where game critics and fans alike have been yearning for improvement over the past few years, so we've got to applaud Seabass and the team for delivering as promised this year.

In most cases with these Cards, you'll be asking yourself why you'd actually want to turn off these abilities in the first place. Unsurprisingly, we weren't particularly interested in stopping our star striker from being able to perform Marseille Roulettes, or our midfield workhorse from having both strong attack and defence abilities. However, there are some occasions when the Card system does make sense, such as turning off a winger's tendency to cut inside. This would obviously be undesirable if you're trying to play a wide game, and so the Card system does have its applications in parts, although we'll bet that most users will set the vast majority of them to 'on' nonetheless.

It's FIFA's huge strides forward over the last two years that has exposed PES' lack of answers. There's now nowhere to hide for the rusty AI, which operates in and around the box in a way that would make PE teachers shout, "Stop Bunching!" FIFA's forte over the past two games (player animation) also points out huge deficiencies on the PES side, with jarring animation that not only affects the visual appeal of the game, but the sense of control you have over a player as well. All too often, a simple change in direction results in a sluggish and jittery movement, while first touches are a lottery that doesn't appear to rely on your skill or the player's stats at all.

You'll also find a couple of curious additions to the basic player controls, such as the ability to take control of goalkeepers by pressing in the right thumbstick and left bumper button simultaneously. Controlling the keeper isn't exactly new to football games, although PES 2010 arguably offers the widest scope of control that we've seen yet by allowing players to switch to the keeper continuously while off the ball, move him around at will, and then prompt saves where necessary. Konami has also tinkered with the penalty controls this year, although the less said about that, the better. We're still trying to figure out the system, although we will say that the difference between shooting wide and on target does seem to be overly fine on the directional and power controls.

There aren't really any standout new modes in PES 2010 per se. The Master League has been spruced up with more managerial options and a Europa League license as well, although the Europa League isn't playable separately in the same way that the Champions League mode allows. This Champions League mode is largely the same as last year in that the tournament's official logo and video sequences have been dealt out lavishly, although the actual mode still lacks all the official club licenses and is limited to the regular array of unlicensed teams in the game (i.e. only Man Utd and Liverpool in the Premiership, although the rest of the European leagues do have considerably more licensed sides).

PES' Become a Legend mode - which surfaced last year and is essentially Konami's take on FIFA's Be a Pro mode - also remains largely the same as last year's effort. As with all things PES, it lacks the production values of its FIFA equivalent, but the more worrying absence is functionality that connects your player to other modes in the game. EA Canada managed this with the Virtual Pro features in FIFA 10, which tie your avatar's progression into every mode in the game (both on and offline) with impressive depth to match, although Konami's lack of innovation in this area means that the only outlet for your Legend is the 4 player online co-op once again.

As far as the new '360-Degree Control' for dribbling is concerned, we really haven't noticed any difference over last year's system. In fact, we'd say that both FIFA and PES have fallen short of the sort of fidelity boasted by their apparent 360 degree dribbling schemes, although at least FIFA 10 offers more subtle dribbling movement than last year with its new controls. Apart from the Konami marketing spiel we've received that promotes this feature in PES 2010, we'd be hard pressed to say that it even exists at all.

A final note on the sound: While the commentary duo of Jon Champion and Mark Lawrenson offers up the same level of punditry and analysis that we've come to expect over the last couple of PES games, the musical score is a huge improvement this year. Fully licensed tracks (most of which you will probably have heard before) are played throughout PES' various menus and, while some tracks are a touch outdated (e.g. Andrew WK's 'Party Hard'), there's no ignoring the significant improvement all-round.

To run this game properly on your PC there are several minimum requirement that must meet with your PC such as Processor Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz HT or higher, 1 Gb System memory , graphic card such as Nvidia Geforce 8600GT or higher or Ati Radeon 9800Pro, DirectX version 9.0c compliant, Windows XP sp2 or higher, and 6 Gb free space. if your PC has meet with the minimum requirement, what are waiting for? come on quickly buy the DVD game and install on your PC play it, enjoy it...!!!